Rep. Gene Green: Bolivians Don’t Care A

Last week, Paul Burka typed up some of his conversations with Texas Blue Dogs Chet Edwards and Gene Green. The two Congressmen complained about the the climate

“Representative Green needs to brush up on his climate science. In both 2007 and 2008 Bolivia saw hundreds of thousands displaced in its Amazon lowlands by worsening floods that [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has linked specifically – down to the river basin in which they occurred – to the effects of climate change. The glaciers that provide the water supply for the capital city, La Paz, are expected to be gone by mid century. Changes on this scale aren’t caused by burning tires in Bolivia, they’re caused by burning coal and oil ever since the Industrial Revolution. President Morales, it might be said, has also offered some choice words about the mitigation challenge facing the industrialized world. “I would like to say with great sincerity that we are sorry,” Morales stated in New York at a UN Summit on Climate Change, “if there are certain countries that feel negatively affected by the survival of my country and the survival of indigenous people.”

Forrest Wilder, a native of Wimberley, Texas, is associate editor of the Observer. Forrest specializes in environmental reporting and runs the “Forrest for the Trees” blog. Forrest has appeared on Democracy Now!, The Rachel Maddow Show and numerous NPR stations. His work has been mentioned by The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Time magazine and many other state and national publications. Other than filing voluminous open records requests, Forrest enjoys fishing, kayaking, gardening and beer-league softball. He holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin.